Everything is Always Art

What a great summer and fall! Ma-ma mia! Many of you may remember that I was selected by ArtPrize for their Pitch Night Detroit Award back in May, which meant they awarded me $5,000 to create a new sound and light installation that was featured at ArtPrize 10 in Grand Rapids. It went smashingly great! Thousands of visitors came to see my work, I was on the ArtPrize public vote leaderboard for most votes during the entire festival and the reviews and feedback were fantastic! Thank you to everyone who supported me and came out, to ArtPrize and to my friends and family for their continued support!

This video is a three minute synopsis of what it was like to walk around the space and you get to hear some of the sounds, as well. This work, the lights, sounds, everything, was created specifically for the space and was designed to be a reflective space for visitors to experience themselves, or whatever they wish.

This work will be hosted again at another venue in the near future. But until then, please enjoy this video!

Sound Space turned out great and I’m so lucky to have had this experience. So many people who walked out of the exhibit said some of the kindest and most inspiring things anybody has ever said to me. I was already motivated to create works that connect me to people, connects people to whatever they want and to provide a platform for reflection. But now I’m even more motivated after this experience. I feel like I can accomplish anything!

Thank you to everyone who supported me and came out, to ArtPrize and to my friends and family for their continued support!

This work, the lights, sounds, everything, were created specifically for the space and were designed to be a reflective space for visitors to experience themselves, or whatever they wish. Sound Space will be hosted again at another venue in the near future.

“As it is, we are merely bolting our lives—gulping down undigested experiences as fast as we can stuff them in—because awareness of our own existence is so superficial and so narrow that nothing seems to us more boring than simple being. If I ask you what you did, saw, heard, smelled, touched and tasted yesterday, I’m likely to get nothing more than the thin, sketchy outline of the few things that you noticed, and of those only what you thought worth remembering. But suppose you could answer, “It would take me forever to tell you, and I am much too interested in what’s happening now.” -Alan Watts

In order to be strongly interested in what’s happening now, we need, in some way, to connect with the openness of finding meaningful experiences. Often we go into artistic spaces to look for the specific works…the painting, the video installation, the sculpture, and so on. As significant as the actual works are, I think there is something at least equally meaningful beyond that idea, which is: the experience of having an interaction with art. Sound Space is about creating experiences which encourage reflection and pause, and asks the visitor to interact with the artwork for a longer period of time- not for the benefit of the work, rather for the potential benefit of the observer. This work is about what the experience does to you, the effect your experience has on the work, others around you, and the space you’re in. This work encourages art as being connected with human experience.

Sound Space is a sound and light installation. The space is the visual aspect, curated to set the stage for what observers hear and experience. I’m interested in creating a platform in which these human experiencescan happen. Sound Space would invite connections between the visitor and the work, opening up the possibility for anything to occur to them or happen during their visit. Sound Space is a platform for observers to experience themselves.

The Work

The setting is designed to encourage the visitor to stay and listen to the work for as long as they wish. The sound work for Sound Space was created specially for this ArtPrize 10 project. The work was composed after the venue and space were determined so that the spirit of the venue and space were in my thoughts as I created this sound work.

I did it! Last night I took home the Pitch Night Detroit Award after successfully convincing a panel of wonderful art experts that Sound Space needed to be brought into existence. The event took place in Hamtramck (like a Detroit neighborhood but it’s its own city) at Bank Suey and was put on by ArtPrize of Grand Rapids. The winner, c’est moi!, got $5,000 and a high profile venue spot at this year’s ArtPrize 10.

The other 4 finalists were great and it was an honor to be on the stage with them! I look forward to hopefully seeing their work at ArtPrize in September!

If you’re unfamiliar, ArtPrize is, I think, the biggest arts competition in the world. Certainly at the top, if not the biggest. Every year about 1500 artists set up works at venues throughout downtown Grand Rapids and compete for the top spots. There are category prizes, and two big top prizes: $200K for most public votes and $200K for juried award winner. Wowser!

My work, called Sound Space, is going to be a sound and light installation that will provide visitors with a platform for reflection and pause. I want this to be a space where people can physically go inside this artwork and have their own experience. It’s very important that people have their own experience.

I look forward to putting this together and seeing how people react to it. Thanks to everyone who came out to the event! I had such a great time and I got to meet so many great people. And I really look forward to working with everyone at ArtPrize. It’s gonna be fantastic!

“Project 100” is the idea where you donate $25 to www.ArtHouse43.com and in return I, artist Troy Ramos, will write a composition/sound work for you! This work can be specifically for you or based on something of your choice... a photo, a poem, your name, a word, an image, whatever, anything! This is the ultimate collaboration with a max of 100 people who can participate. It'll become one, big sound project with up to 100 different elements! Just click Support and commission your ORIGINAL music composition for only $25. Then send me anything you want me to focus on, theme-wise, if any, and I'll write the work.

“This is your chance to be a part of something unique that hasn't been created before. These works will only exist if you help bring them into existence,” says Troy Ramos.

”I love writing works for people. It’s such a great way to have a positive interaction. We’re all looking for connections, we’re all floating around looking for significance or something meaningful. This could easily be one of those moments.”

Want to hear an example? Here is one work that a friend requested after telling me a story he thought of and left it to the composer to create something (or not) based off of that story. After listening to his story, I came up with Birth of a Ghost Bike. This is the story behind Birth of a Ghost Bike:

“This story was described to me like this: somebody was enjoying themselves on an evening with friends and drinking, having a great time. After a while, they started riding their bike home after the party, when surprisingly, they are blindsidedly hit in the face with a lead pipe. There was really no further part of the story, but that was more than enough to get me started on this work.”

With that in mind, this is what Ramos came up with. The beginning is obviously light and fun and playful, but then towards the end it gets a little bit grittier than he’d normally write, almost like a sound dragon breathing fire on to the ears of the universe.

The works of course aren’t representative. They already have their own meaning and the artists say he would never project anything, even as interesting as a story as this is, or a poem or a person might be, onto the work itself. But the inspiration for creating works can come from anywhere. That has no limits, in his opinion. But for the “Birth of a Ghost Bike”, Ramos says he really enjoyed this story and writing a new work based off of it and he can’t wait to compose more of these so send them in!”

And there are still slots to participate in Project 100, if you're interested. Simply go to www.arthouse43.com, click on "Support" at the top of the page, donate $25 and tell him if you have a basis for a sound work (you don't have to have an idea, btw!) and he'll write you a work!

Sonic Sketches is an hour-long sound art piece for piano and electronics which was released on iTunes and Amazon on May 11, 2015. This work experiments with big, sonic spaces and welcomes a thoughtful, reflective atmosphere. It is an exploration into themes which unravel into spaces that hint at structure but remain in a state of free movement.

”With each work I create I’m getting some stronger sense of clarity, both for the actual works themselves and the process by which I construct them,” said Ramos. “I’m really proud of this album and I really hope it gets supported. It’s true I’d create art no matter what, I really don’t want to have to go down that road. If we want to support art, we have to support the artists; particularly those artists who are perhaps winding their way through the woods, and especially those artists who are sensing some sort of daylight.”

This work was unveiled at the Between the Lines art show in Michigan and is available on iTunes, Amazon and Bandcamp!

Troy Ramos's new work for two percussionists and fixed media, called "Untitled", premiered at the Music Center in Portland, OR on Aug 16 2014. The performers are Andrew Angell and David Solomon of Seattle's RE:PERCUSSION DUO. (Part 1, which includes fixed media, was not played due to technical issues, but will be played along with Part 2 at a future concert.)

The concert was a great success and had a great turnout! “The performers were great and the feedback was fantastic,” said Ramos. “They really made the work shine and I think the audience felt that.”

“For years I’d travel back and forth between Portland, OR and Michigan taking the train, the Empire Builder route on Amtrak. It takes over two days to do that trip in one direction. Sometimes it’s challenging, and sometimes it’s powerfully inspiring. I saw incredible things along those journeys, and would often create art works along the way.

One evening, as the sun was setting and the train was passing through North Dakota and we rolled past endless barren fields of dry yellow “grass”, I was overcome with sounds in my head... melodies, harmonies...complete structures; LARGE structures. I immediately began composing the sound work which would be titled “Yellow”.

This work is its own collection of sounds, full of big sonic spaces, as big as the country that was endlessly rolling by my train seat window. The works have their own meaning, always. But this is how I felt inspired to write it. I was moved by the sun dropping over these ghost fields of yellow, land which I imagined was full of life at one point. I could almost hear the echoes of the movement of native people and all the activity that took place there. Maybe something was speaking to me, I don’t know. But whenever it seems the universe is trying to tell me something, I listen.”

”Yellow” is a 24-minute work for electronic sounds and wind instruments. The final several minutes are intentionally silent. “It felt like a respectful thing to do, given the inspiration for the work,” Ramos said.

By the time Ramos reaches his destination in Michigan, the work was completely finished and was released on iTunes and Amazon a week later under the name “Troyston Ramos” (one of a few names the artist likes to invent for his enjoyment).

The release of the album was also filled with inspiration to give back. Half of the proceeds earned from album sales, for the first year, would be donated to the local humane society. “Those shelters are run by great people who have a tough job. And all those beautiful puppy souls deserve as much love and attention we can give them. I’m just trying to make a positive contribution in whatever way I can.”

Troy Ramos unveiled his brand new sound work “Endlessly Illuminated” at the Portland Art Museum Employee Art Show, From the Right Hemisphere. The show opened July 11, 2013 in the James F. & Marion Miller Gallery in the Mark Building at the Portland Art Museum. The show was FREE and open to the public until July 20th.

”Endlessly Illuminated” is a phrase taken from a poem by French port Arthur Rimbaud. “This poem really resonated with me. It feels essentially like a work about the hard brutality of explorers throughout human history and how we humans are destined to explore, regardless of any consequences. It’s a powerful poem.”

The sound work almost explores the other side of that, however. It’s an ambient, mostly very soft collection of works written for piano and electronics. “I have a clear drive for the reflective and to create works that invite certain moods. I don’t want to lecture anyone through anything I create. I only hope that visitors interact with it in a thoughtful way and that they’re able to create their own experiences from that interaction.”